Pishtaco
"[1] In the most recent manifestation of this fear, people suspect pishtacos of selling fat to fund the international purchase of weapons and repayment of overseas debts.
Manya records that one may gain protection from a pishtaco by chewing chancaca, eating earth, or showing a clove of garlic that has been pierced by a needle.
[13] Spaniards were also said to have killed natives and boiled their corpses to produce fat to grease their metal muskets and cannons, which rusted quickly in the humid Amazon.
[14] Anthropological researcher Andrew Canessa notes that fear of pishtacos "appeared to have been focused on the Bethlehemite friars," who cared for the sick and buried the dead, and took up alms collections on remote roads, possibly because the order's founder, Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur, was known to clean wounds with his mouth in an expression of humility.
[19] The work of anthropologists has been stymied because measurements of fat folds were rumored to be part of a plot to select the fattest individuals later to be targeted by pishtacos.
[20] Police at one point claimed that they were searching for six additional members of the gang,[20] including an alleged ringleader, Hilario Cudena, who "has been killing to extract fat from victims for more than three decades,"[20] and two Italian nationals.
[21] The story was that the gang members severed victims' heads, arms and legs, removed their organs, and suspended the carcasses from hooks above candles, which caused the fat to drip into tubs below.
[25][26] The Retablo Ayucuchano of El Pistaku by Nicario Jiménez shows the evolution of the pishtaco legend over time: the topmost layer represents the greasing of bells, the middle represents the greasing of modern technology (including airplanes, computers, and factory machinery), and the bottom shows fat being sold off to fund the international purchase of weapons and repayment of overseas debts.
In the book, members of the Peruvian Civil Guard investigate the disappearance of three men, trying to determine if they were killed by the Shining Path guerilla group or by pishtacos.
The crew of the Spotted Custard travel to the Peruvian Andes in search of a supposed newly discovered species of vampire that is on the verge of extinction.
The pishtacos in this story are described as being very tall, thin, shock-white haired, and red-eyed with a single columnar tooth for fat-sucking instead of the traditional elongated canine teeth of vampires for blood-sucking.
